What Is BDR And Why Do I NEED It?

One of the single most important things you can do to protect your business is ensure you can recovery your data. The truth is, most data loss incidents aren’t rare. Most disasters are related to human error or minor power outages, common situations that occur far more often than we’d like to believe. The fact of the matter is, both data backup and thorough disaster recovery measures are REQUIRED to ensure the best business continuity possible.

Common examples of backup methods include off-site tape and cloud storage. Many companies think these methods will protect them if there’s an outage or a disaster. The unfortunate reality is that while backup is generally inexpensive and convenient, it does not ensure quick recovery when a disaster occurs – it only ensures that the data is stored somewhere and can be accessed eventually.

What is Backup?

Backup is the act of copying your files to another location. The other location can be a tape backup, a secondary computer or a cloud hosted backup solution.

Backup protects your data in the case of theft, accidental deletion, or other technical issues like hardware failure. With backup in place, you can access a copy of your data and restore it when needed.

What is Disaster Recovery?

Disaster recovery is like backup but for larger incidents. A thorough image of your disk drives and servers are taken and mirrored. The image is like a snapshot of all your data at a particular point in time. In the case of a disaster, you can restore your system faster than if you had to reinstall your OS and files.

Disasters that may require disaster recovery include total network crashes, hardware damage or extended power loss. These problems can bring down your business and cost you a lot of money in wasted time and effort.

Backup and Disaster Recovery: Both, Not Either Or!

While backup is important, it should NOT be implemented in lieu of a disaster recovery plan. Both backup and disaster recovery measures are two halves of a complete protection plan for your business. If you don’t have backups of your data, YOU NEED TO GET THEM! If you already have backup for your business, make sure it is storing data off-site. This can either be a cloud hosted backup or secondary copies of your data in another location away from your servers. A cloud backup system is preferable, as it is more reliable and easier to access. Additionally, tape backups can fail to restore.

Next is to ensure your disk drives and servers are being imaged. By mirroring your system, you’re able to recover your data fast instead of wasting time waiting for data to copy over. It’s the difference between being up in under an hour, to being up the next day or more.

Lastly, regularly check your backup system to make sure it’s working properly. Test if your data can be easily transferred without any inaccuracies or lag. Run practice drills to make sure your recovery plan functions effectively. If you encounter any problems, take the time to fix it BEFORE a real emergency happens. A little extra effort now can spare your business a larger crisis in the future.

What To Do Next

Contact your IT support provider and discuss backup and data recovery with them. Make sure there is an emergency plan in place that will restore your data with minimal downtime and no data loss. Discuss what upgrades or additional services are needed to maintain and improve your backups and disaster recovery measures so they are efficient, effective and thorough.

If you don’t have an IT support provider for your business, you can contact PCI at 914-934-9775 or email info@p-connect.com. We can implement and oversee all your BDR needs, so you don’t have to worry about losing your data after an unforeseen incident.